A UAV for the first-ever autonomous solar-powered crossing of the Atlantic Ocean

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The Team

To tackle the challenge of crossing the Atlantic Ocean, we build upon a strong team of institutional & industrial partners. Each partner represents one of the core disciplines of the project. The current list of confirmed partners is given below.

Partners:

ETH Zurich’s Autonomous Systems Lab (ASL) is responsible for the overall project coordination, overall aircraft development and system engineering. ASL contributes more than 10-years of experience in solar aircraft design and a broad research experience in autonomous flight systems and general robotics to the AtlantikSolar project. In addition, ETH Zurich’s Centre for Structure Technologies contributes state-of-the-art infrastructure and knowledge about light-weight fibre-reinforced structure design.

Super Computing Systems (SCS) is responsible for developing and manufacturing major electronic and avionics subsystems, e.g. the satellite communication system and connected cameras, solar module power electronics as well as sensory systems. SCS brings two decades of industrial experience in the areas of electronics, software and system design into the project.

The Photovoltaics-Center of the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM) is responsible for the development and manufacturing of the lightweight high-efficiency mono c-Si solar modules on AtlantikSolar. Established in 2013, the CSEM PV-Center builds on more than 25 years of experience of the IMT PV-Lab of EPFL.

EPF Lausanne’s Photovoltaics-Lab (PV-Lab) supports CSEM during the solar module development process. Founded in 1984, current activities of EPFL’s PV-Lab cover a broad spectrum from fundamental research to industrial technology transfer in both thin-film as well as traditional photovoltaics technology.

Skyguide, as Switzerland’s major air navigation services provider, is responsible for the flight regulatory side in the AtlantikSolar project. This includes general flight permit approval, route long-term pre-planning as well as live route re-planning during the Atlantic-Crossing.

MeteoSwiss, Switzerland’s Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology, is responsible for meteorological planning and support. This includes pre- and live re-planning of the Atlantic routes using high-fidelity weather data combined with mathematical optimization techniques. MeteoSwiss is the official weather partner of AtlantikSolar.

Lotz Aeromodels

Lotz Aeromodels and external partners perform the aircraft structural design and manufacturing. They also contribute 30 years of experience in radio-controlled and free-flight model aircraft design and piloting – which led to multiple national- and European championship titles – to the AtlantikSolar project.